Happy Anniversary, Patricia Neal!

(20 January 1926 , Packard, Kentucky, USA - 8 August 2010 , Edgartown, Massachusetts, USA)
Birth Name: Patricia Louise Neal

Studio head Jack Warner had considered Jennifer Jones, Gene Tierney, Ida Lupino, and Eleanor Parker for the part of Dominique Francon, the female lead in The Fountainhead. In September 1945, the Hollywood Reporter announced that Warners wanted to borrow Alan Ladd from Paramount to star him opposite Lauren Bacall. The role of Howard Roark was eventually offered to Gary Cooper, whose wife, Rocky, had read the book. He was rightfully hesitant to take the part. Cooper’s own attorney, I. H. Prinzmetal, had declined the offer, stating, “Cooper’s audience was not intellectual, and if they heard him say such selfish things they’d hold it against him. It might change his reputation and career!” Though she never interfered with Gary’s decisions in choosing roles, this time Rocky strongly advised him to override his attorney’s advice and accept the part. Said Rand about Cooper, “He is my choice for ‘Roark.’ His physical appearance is exactly right.”


In a 2002 essay on The Fountainhead, Merrill Schleier says about Dominique’s character, “She is passionate and repressed, but possesses too many masculine traits to be considered female. Rand renders her as a masochist and a defeatist, capable only of destructive acts, in contrast to Roark, who creates... She is unable to respond sexually to men until she meets Roark, whose masculine creative agency ignites her passion, thereby completing her. Rand herself called Francon a masochist, ‘like most women.’ In the film, Francon’s sexual dysfunction and gender confusion are demonstrated by her numerous changes in costumes, from masculine riding attire to lacy negligee... (Her) mannish costumes were erotic, drawing attention to the femininity of the bodies they cloted, and a provocation, an example of gender ambiguity. Like other such female characters, Francon later casts aside her masculine attire to claim her true heterosexuality.”

Will you marry me? I want to stay with you. We’ll take a house in some small town, and I’ll keep it for you. Don’t laugh, I can. I’ll cook, I’ll wash your clothes, I’ll scrub the floors.” —Dominique, The Fountainhead (1949) Following a beautifully tender scene in which Roark professes his love for Dominique, he picks her up in his arms and asks, “You won’t leave me, will you?” He kisses her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids, and her hair. Dominique confesses her love for Roark, kneeling before him in a gentle and ironically sensitive moment—a symbolic reversal of roles. This one scene alone solidified the actual and very real moment when Patricia knew that she and Gary Cooper were in love. -"Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life" by Stephen Michael Shearer.

-"I loved Gary Cooper, for years and years and years. And I still love him. Of course, Becky (Cooper's wife, Veronica Balfe, (Sandra Shaw) was not very happy with me. And I don't blame her. Nor was her little daughter, Maria Cooper, who I guess was about 11 when we started... And I was very sorry. But Gary...I just loved Gary very much." - Patricia Neal, in a 2008 interview.